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PART TEN(10)

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One Dash One had seen first one light bobbing towards his position and then another, seconds later.

He was reaching to activate the HoCra's comm-link, when OCley came through with what he needed to know himself, and what he needed to pass on to One Dash Two.

He had the ShoRi loaded by the time the two lights converged on the peering glass set into the HoCra's hatch, and he popped it for Penny and Everett.

Penny came up into the vehicle first, with Everett close on her heels, and One Dash One stood from where he had been kneeling before the munitions keep.

"OCley dropped me the orders, and he now wants you to support Two Dash Two," the HoCra pilot told Everett straight, and set the ShoRi on the padded passenger bench on the left side of the cabin.

"Using anything special?" Everett responded quizzically.

One Dash One snorted and answered, "Yes, you lucky pupido. He wants fireworks, so he said to bring either the Quivarren or the Acquizen; whichever you preferred."

Everett reached past the man and took a L(oad) S(houlder) harness from a hang rack mounted on the cabin wall, as he made his choice known to him. "Better load the Acquizen for me, then."

He actually fancied the Quivarren, but it was a heavier piece than he could handle comfortably. The Acquizen was about as impressive, and it was considerably lighter, though it had a terrific kick-back.

Weight was the major issue, he figured. He was taxed from his mad dash earlier, and he needed to get to the lookout quickly and without the undue danger of stumbling and putting himself out of mission commission, that the Quivarren would undoubtedly put him in.

One Dash One knelt to extract the Acquizen from its padding, and Everett handed the harness to Penny saying, "Could you please wrap me in this fancy belt, Penny."

She smiled at his use of her real name, and moved behind him to do so. He saw One Dash One's eyebrows lift for the same reason, and he wondered if the man would assume it was a nickname he had given to the young, brown-haired woman.

When the harness was snug, he started to say 'now the ShoRi', but she laughed with light melody and informed him good-naturedly, "You're shorting me credit-wise already, Ever."

He smiled crookedly at One Dash One, whose eyebrows shot a little higher this time.

"We're on a mission and technically I'm your superior," Everett rejoined lightly. "You don't get any credit under these conditions." In case he should be coming crossed every bit as much of a jerk as OCley could reportedly be, he added with gravity, "No one does, if everything is going to come off without a hitch."

One Dash One chuckled dryly, as he rose with the now loaded Acquizen.

"Well then, I would say a generous pile of credit was extended somewhere in the earlier stages of this mission," he observed flatly. "Our game plan has turned out to have more knots in it, than a confused tangela!"

Taking the heavy munitions rifle from the man, Everett could not deny he had a point, but no more than nodded his acknowledgement of the fact. And then the younger man shifted around under his load, and stepped down onto the 'step-up'.

He paused to look back over his shoulder at Penny, as One Dash One moved for the pilot's seat. She moved in behind him and gave him a gentle nudge, knowing he was about to say something.

Everett took her signal in stride, and stepped down into the ruins.

She stood beside him a moment later, and having clicked on her Lowi and turned its 'whispered' beam on his face, she pressed quietly, "You wanted to say...?"

"Just, 'Wish my aim is true'," he replied hesitantly, feeling suddenly shy and reaching to fiddle with anything hanging from his E-belt.

"Oh", he added, realizing something. "These are for you, now; OCley wants you to keep an eye on him, and when he signals you, you signal One Dash One ~ He'll know what to do."

One Dash One was starting the HoCra as she took the binoculars from his hand and confirmed, "I'll use them when I can."

She let a second pass, and then ~ on the lines of his first request~ she responded, "I wish no one gets killed, in the cover fire."

She heard the hover bines engage, and then his slightly raised voice as he said meaningfully, "That's what I said."

Penny tilted her Lowi so that it shown on her own face, and he could see that she was smiling.

"No credit extended, remember?" she reminded him with a wink. She then lifted her free hand and brushed the back of it lightly over his cheek, and added carefully, "I do wish your aim true, always, Ever."

She wanted to kiss him the luck he requested, but he turned away and humped it quickly in the general direction of the lookout soon-to-be sniper-point.

The look in his eye when he had turned away, contented her that he had wanted to kiss her, as well, and she spun smartly, her heel upon the rain-slicked surface of a leveled ebony stone.

She caught One Dash One staring at her through the peering glass set in the HoCra's cabin hatch. He had a goofy grin on his somewhat hansom mug, she noted with a frown of displeasure and a hint of embarrassment flushing in both of her cheeks.

She glared a matched set of daggers at the pilot, and pointed towards the front of the craft in a 'go thither or else' fashion.

One Dash One grimaced at her and saluted ~ more in seriousness than out of sarcasm, she trusted ~ and then he disappeared from her immediate sight.

Penny skipped to the front of the hovercraft, brightened the candlepower setting on her Lowi, and then swept its intensified beam over the right-front vicinical quarter of the ruins around the vehicle.

Selecting the lowest, most even path to swing the HoCra onto, she positioned herself on it, about five yards away, and waved the Lowi's beam at One Dash One, to signal where he should make his first shift to.

Knowing that the vehicle’s hover bines rotated at only twenty percent of their full 'revolutions per' potential, while on their 'stealth' setting, she thought to herself unhappily, 'This is going to be...'

One of the prop guard mesh-assemblies screeched as it grazed a high stone beneath the shifting craft, and the sound set her teeth on edge, as she finished the thought, 'a metal-screeching-lee fun job.'

Of course, One Dash One didn't look too thrilled at the prospect of all the scars his baby was going to have.

'Tough!' she told the chagrinned pilot silently. 'The HoCra will paint. I've only got one set of ears, and they have to last me.'

She hoped he wouldn't suffer the abuse to the vehicle for very long. A call on its inboard comm. unit to OCley would bear fruit, she was sure. The HoCra's growling engines ~ even at full RPM ~ couldn't be as loud as that screech had been, and unless the float-cushion was 'thickened', there were going to be a lot more like it...

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